Is the U.S. Helping the UAE Torture Yemenis? #OpYemen

The short answer is yes, but according to Yemenis citizens who were detained in these secret UAE prisons in Yemen, they are not being tortured by Americans. Complicated? That’s how it’s supposed to be. Following reports from the Associated Press and Human Rights Watch which detailed horrible personal accounts from Yemenis who were tortured in secret prisons located in Aden and Hadramawt in eastern Yemen and operated by the UAE. The Human Rights Watch also reported that there were 11 secret facilities in Yemen that they investigated whilst the AP reported on 18 separate facilities the AP called “clandestine lock ups”. These reports earned a response from the State Department who referred any inquiries to the Department of Defense to which a DoD spokesman bureaucratically replied “As a matter of policy we do not discuss the details of bilateral intelligence arrangements with partner nations. This is no exception.” In making this statement the DoD spokesman neither confirmed or denied the United States involvement in torturing Yemenis, our research strongly suggests the contrary.

Victims of this torture, mostly Yemenis men tell very familiar gruesome tales of being subject to electrocution, forced nudity, sexual harassment, beatings with metal objects, sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, and threats. These accounts of torture at UAE operated secret prisons in Yemen sound just like stories of torture we hear from Gitmo Detainees and Secret U.S. prisons in Iraq during the Iraq War. “We always adhere to the highest standards of personal and professional conduct, we would not turn a blind eye because we are obligated to report any violations of human rights,” said Dana White spokeswomen for the U.S. Department of Defense. I would ask then why does the United States portray the exact opposite of that statement from Dana White in every sovereign nation the United States has ever brutishly involved us in in recent memory? American citizens shouldn’t be paying via our tax system to bomb one of the poorest countries in the world nor should American citizens be paying for Yemenis citizens to be tortured in secret UAE prisons on Yemen soil. It defies common logic and human decency that nearly 2,000 men were taken to these prisons and never heard from again sons, brothers, and fathers who have simply vanished causing weekly protest on the streets of Yemen demanding answers, but when they call Yemen government officials the families are told the case is “with the United States”. Laura Pitter, senior national security counsel at Human Rights Watch, said the torture “shows that the US hasn’t learned the lesson that cooperating with forces that are torturing detainees and ripping families apart is not an effective way to fight extremist groups. (Human Rights Watch Full Report)

These prisons were planned in 2013 when the Obama administration cut a deal with the Yemen government to build a prison for Guantanamo detainees in Yemen to which an unnamed member of the State Department replied: “You build something like that, you’re responsible for it.” In 2013 the United States started sending Guantanamo detainees to Yemen, these are men that were “suspected” of being members of Al Qaeda and other extremist groups, it’s as if the United States was trying to further destabilize an already destabilized region, wonder where we have done that before? Cambodia, South America, Vietnam, Syria, Iraq, and Somalia are a few that come to mind.

When the decision to go to war is longer made by Congress then the decision to go to war is not up to us, the citizens of this country, war has never been publically appealing but it will always be politically appealing to the people who think they are in power and financially appealing to the ones who are actually in power. An average American citizen may rightfully ask themselves why are we building little Gitmo’s in Yemen in 2011? This is because Obama had planned to ship Gitmo detainees to Yemen in order to house and “rehabilitate” them. Yemen was only one country of many Obama had planned to send Gitmo detainees to all the while peddling to the American public that the mission was to close Gitmo without revealing that the real plan was to build little Gitmo’s in terrorist hotbeds all over the globe. Most of these planned facilities were built, but instead of housing just Gitmo detainees we now know that facilities in Yemen are being used to house and torture Yemenis who are kidnapped from the streets of Yemen in what Human Rights Watch called “arbitrarily detained or forcibly disappeared.” Human Rights Watch also reports that children are among the prisoners being held in these secret lockups and tortured, no information is ever given to the families as to why their loved one is being detained.

The crisis in Yemen has gone on for over 900 days resulting in over 10,000 deaths and millions of Yemenis in famine. Saudi and UAE forces are targeting boys and men to detain and torture them and the majority of them never come home, those are war crimes and this is genocide. The United States is not operating these prisons in Yemen, the UAE is, but sadly since the U.S. has tortured in the past, their tactics of torture have become known to the world and those tactics are evident in these secret lockups throughout Yemen. We know about the details of these planned prisons because the Yemen Government and the U.S. Government argued over how to operate the facilities whether they should just be normal jails or rehabilitation jails. They settled on rehabilitation jails and by rehabilitation, they meant “religious and cultural dialogue.” It’s not illogical to conclude that the U.S. was trying to export terrorism by dotting the globe with little Gitmo’s and is it irrational to then assume that the “religious and cultural dialogue” these detainees were or are being fed is Wahhabi? The UAE was also transferring high-level detainees outside of Yemen. According to one of the Yemenis activists, about 15 people accused of being members of AQAP or IS-Y had been transferred a base the UAE has been developing Eritrea’s port city of Assab, over the past two years.

“In 2016, the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea reported on “the rapid construction of what appears to be a military base with permanent structures” at Assab. According to security analysts, the base includes its own port, airbase, and a military training facility, where the UAE has trained Yemeni forces, including the Security Belt and Hadrami Elite Forces, according to the Middle East Institute. The UN Monitoring Group also reported that the base has “expanded to encompass not only personnel from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates but also Yemeni troops and other troops in transit.” – Human Rights Watch

This violates international law by forcibly detaining these men convicting them without trial and shipping them out of Yemen without so much as a phone call to their family’s never mind each of these men’s separate rights to fight any type clandestine extradition against their will. The Yemen Government is responsible for the safety and well-being of their citizenry, it is their responsibility also that these men see fair trials. These prison camps are built in Houthi-Saleh held areas of Yemen and that is the Yemenis Government’s excuse for not allowing the detainees visits from their families. it’s not safe enough for the families to go there, but it was plenty safe enough during the time it took for officials to construct the prison? Safe enough to operate a prison that has Houthi-Saleh prisoners in a place that is allegedly held by the Houthi-Saleh terrorist? Even more perplexing is if this is a prison in Houthi-Saleh held territory then why haven’t the Houthi-Saleh terrorist ever tried to attack the prison? Could it be that the people who give orders to the Houthi-Saleh terrorist are the same people who run the secret prison? A former detainee said a high-ranking Security Belt Commander told him he had initially trusted the UAE was detaining suspects based on “strong intelligence” but he now believes not everyone they arrested was in fact linked to extremist groups.

Human Rights Watch reported on many prisoners stories this article will quote one of the prisoner’s accounts, but we implore everyone to read (Human Rights Watch Full Report) and raise awareness.

“Muneer and Kareem: One night in the autumn of 2016, Security Belt officers came at 2 a.m. to the family home of “Kareem” and “Muneer,” both in their twenties, intending to arrest Muneer. Muneer was not home, so the Security Belt officers blindfolded Kareem, took him to a nearby camp and interrogated him. After a few hours, the men dumped a still blindfolded Kareem in a location he could not immediately identify. When he discovered where he was, he walked home. A family member said he “was very scared” when he arrived. The next day, Muneer surrendered at the Central Prison. Prison officials told Muneer’s father his son’s file was “with the coalition.” The general prosecutor issued a release order for Muneer. The prosecutor’s office told the family they could not secure his release, as the authorities did not respect their orders.”

“The UAE informed the UN Panel of Experts on Yemen it had provided “military, financial, and training assistance” and “intelligence, logistic information, and aerial intervention,” but that the forces were under the control of the Yemeni Armed Forces. The UN Panel concluded that: “While nominally under the command of the legitimate Government, they are effectively under the operational control of the United Arab Emirates, which oversees ground operations in Mukalla.” A 2016 CIVIC report concluded the same.” – Human Rights Watch

A Yemeni NGO monitoring the detentions said that the Security Belt forces transferred more than 50 prisoners from the Central Prison in Aden, Yemen to the UAE headquarters in Buraika in 2017. The Yemeni Government is pushing back demanding 27 detainees be released in November of 2016 yet by February of 2017 only 10 detainees had been released. Prison officials told the General Prosecutor’s office in Yemen that they could not release the other prisoners without “authorization from the coalition”. That would be like Attorney General Jeff Sessions ordering the release of 27 men held in pre-trial and being told by the prison that they had to get authorization from the United Nations first. It sounds preposterous because it is preposterous, the only thing this “coalition” has done is meticulously plan a modern-day coup via manufactured proxy wars, daily war crimes and over 900 days of blatant genocide. This genocide is labeled by the international community as an “intervention”, Saudi Arabia having 150,000 troops on the ground and over 100 jets in the air is not an intervention, it’s an invasion. Having Marocco, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Pakistan, Sudan, and the United States all providing naval units, fighter jets and ground troops in Yemen is not an intervention, it’s an invasion.

All these countries including the United States and Suadi Arabia which are among the richest in the world are bombing one of the poorest nations on this planet and their justification for killing over 10,000, imprisoning and torturing over 2,000 and forcing over one million into famine is, 200 Houthi-Saleh terrorist occupying the country and according to the U.S. presenting a present danger to the United States and Suadi Arabia who the U.S. heinously labels our allies.

“AQAP remains a significant security threat to the United States and to our regional partners and we welcome this effort to specifically remove AQAP from Mukalla and to degrade, disrupt and destroy AQAP in Yemen,” Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said. – Reuters

He said this after saying the United States was putting a “small number” of troops on the ground in Yemen. This would turn out to be one of President Trump’s first hurdles as he had to dodge questions from media as to why an American Navy SEAL was killed in action while fighting Yemen. Recently Senator Rand Paul asked the Body why are we bombing Yemen? Paul went on to purpose that the decision to go to war be placed back into the hands of Congress. All countries involved in the crisis in Yemen should have to answer to the international community for their crimes against humanity in Yemen and an international dialogue needs to be opened into the true events in Yemen, the United States government should not be hiding from the American people Saudi Arabia’s horrible campaign in Yemen as almost no western main stream media covers the crisis in Yemen. the American people should stand up against the Military Industrial Complex and demand the manufacturing of terrorist not become a common tactic to perpetuate war, just maybe if we stop destabilizing their regions and brutally oppressing people around the world America will stop being labeled the number one threat to peace in the world.